Four
by darkestboy
Summary: Four Time Lords find themselves locked up in different parts of space and time by an unknown foe, eager to learn something about each of them. Set between The Armageddon Factor and Destiny Of The Daleks.


**Name: **Four  
**Characters:** 4th Doctor, Romana 1, the Master (Beevers) and the Rani.  
**Synopsis:** Four Time Lords find themselves locked up in different parts of space and time by an unknown foe, eager to learn something about each of them. Set between _The Armageddon Factor_ and _Destiny Of The Daleks_.

"A locked room?" she growled with contempt as she got up from the ground to look at her surroundings. "They'll pay for this."

Her trip to the planet Jakaan in the year 3456 had not yielded the results she had hoped for. The Rani was in no mood for being kept in a locked room. She had work to do, important work and she did not have time for distractions such as incarceration but when she made an attempt to open the door, she was rewarded with a bolt of electricity that sent her flying back for her efforts.

The Rani's face was thunderous upon this insult and she found herself shouting into thin air before she noticed that the room she was locked in was completely white and sterile.

"I am not an experiment. I am the one who experiments. Something you'll learn upon your destruction when I do get out of this room."

There was no response but the Rani knew that wherever she was, someone was watching her and while it unnerved her just the slightest, she was too angry to be afraid of whomever was keeping her captive at the moment.

It had taken the Rani six hours to escape and only because she had been clever enough to simulate her own death. The guards who had been foolish enough to check on her ended up becoming her latest man servants and she promptly departed with them both in her TARDIS.

Two figures in cloaks had watched her escape and upon seeing the results of her deviousness, took their leave to check on their second prisoner.

The Master hadn't woken up from a deep sleep but it had felt like an odd experience for him. Once moment, he had executed a leader of some planet he invaded and was telling the unfortunate inhabitants that he was now their ruler and then next minute he was in this room, alone and somewhat befuddled by the whole thing. He was now located on a prison asteroid, light years away from the very planet he had tried to subjugate.

"How did I end up here? Where is here exactly?"

The Master looked around the room with confusion. He quickly realised that he had been placed in a room of glass and all that glass reflected was the very fact that he was less the man he used to be.

The Master had barely managed to escape Gallifrey and the Eye Of Harmony after the Doctor had once again ruined things for him and then a thought struck the Master. _Of course, who else would do this to me?_

"Oh, Doctor, do you really think this is going to work?" the Master sneered with amusement as he shouted aloud to himself. "What do you think you're going to achieve here? You seem to forget my old friend that no matter how I look, I always like what I see in the mirror. Your scheme has failed."

The Master stood there, waiting for a response but none came and while a part of him was beginning to wonder whether or not the Doctor was responsible for his imprisonment, he could definitely feel that someone somewhere was watching him and that was not something that amused him in the slightest.

"I always win in the end," the Master smirked as his TCE became the instrument that provided the death towards his captors. It had taken him four hours to escape.

Two other guards attempted to stop the disfigured and cloaked Time Lord but he disappeared into a grandfather clock which then faded out of existence. Once again, the Master had evaded a capture and left a parting gift. The cloaked figures were both impressed and disgusted with how the Master had freed himself before they headed to their third captive.

The Doctor knew he wasn't going to win this bet and he regretted even allowing himself to be goaded into running with it in the first place. Romana certainly knew how to push his buttons though.

The room the Doctor was locked in was brightly lit and colourful to the point where it could nearly blind a man but the Doctor noticed that this was also a room that had a door with buttons.

"Hmm, looks too good to be true," the Doctor mused as the sonic screwdriver had proven to be of no use to him. "Looks like I'm going to have to use my wits to get out of this one."

The Doctor had spent an hour and a half going through every possibility with numbers and letters until he managed to open the door at last.

I_ AM _DEAD_LOCKED.

Or in number form, 9_113_4514_121531154.

"Well, that was a bit of a letdown," the Doctor mused to himself as he headed towards his TARDIS, managing to quietly sneak past two guards he assumed were meant to be watching his cell.

"I wonder what Romana's up to. I suppose I better tell her she was right this time."

A mysterious figure heard those words as the TARDIS faded out of the space station the Doctor had found himself trapped on. The mysterious figure then departed himself, intent on following the Time Lord without attracting any major attention.

Romana had been at a dinner party in King Louis's castle and it was one that she decided not to attend with the Doctor. Both her and the Doctor decided on a little wager – a wager that involved each of them going on a seperate adventure and determining which one of them could go the longest in their escapade before attracting some kind of trouble.

Romana reasonably believed that she had this one in the bag. Given that the Doctor often had the subtlety of a sledge hammer, she knew it would probably take him less than an hour before he offended someone and would need her and K9's assistance in getting him out of a life imprisonment sentence or an execution but even she was embarrassed to admit that it hadn't taken long for her to wind up in trouble herself.

Two men dressed in robes had grabbed her within minutes before her departure from King Louis's company, had thrown a bag over her head and then locked her in a dungeon that reeked to high heaven.

"Hygiene in this place is appalling," Romana muttered to herself before picking up a communication device and talking into it. She did not like having to admit defeat but right now, it was a better alternative than the dungeon. "Alright, Doctor, you've proved your point so if you're tracking this, you'll know exactly where I am. Try not to delay picking me up."

Romana waited for a moment but the Doctor did not respond and this both worried and annoyed Romana in equal measure.

When it became further apparent that the Doctor wasn't going to come to her aid, Romana decided it was time to use her own methods in order to escape from the prison. It had taken some talking to but after presenting him with some well argued facts, the king found himself shame faced and apologetic towards Romana's imprisonment and promptly freed her. Romana smiled in victory and as she walked through the streets of Paris, a familiar blue box was standing outside waiting for her. It had taken Romana an hour to escape from her captivity.

"Where have you been?" Romana asked as the Doctor stepped out of the box. "I've been sitting in a dungeon."

"And how long did it take you to get out?" the Doctor smiled, raising an eyebrow.

"Far shorter than it took me to get in there in the first place," Romana smirked as both she and the Doctor stepped inside the TARDIS and he closed the door behind them. "Let's say my negotiating skills are going to come in handy one of these days."

As the TARDIS dematerialised, two cloaked figures stepped out of the shadows and watched it fade away. Their experiment had come to an interesting enough conclusion.

"And what have we learned here?" the first cloaked figured asked the second one.

"That one of them will succeed me when the time comes," the second figure said grimly. "Though they all pose a threat in their own ways."

"There's two of them I'd personally like to execute discreetly now with as little fuss as possible," the first figure said with caution.

"If you're referring to whom I think you are, I have a feeling those two in question will be their own undoing," the second figure smiled. "One of them especially doesn't look like he has much longer to live. As for the other two, it's their more wholesome of qualities that worry me more."

"Should we take them out then, sir?" The first figure had to stop himself from revealing the identity of his fellow cloaked figure.

"No, not yet," the second figure said mysteriously. "The time's not right for it but soon, all four of them will be out of the equation. None of them will succeed me, not ever."

With that, both figures left the planet that was known as Earth and had returned to the planet known as Gallifrey. They had seen and heard enough from all four of the potential threats and very soon, one of them will be the biggest threat of them all but not if the correct actions were taken in advance.

_They will not succeed me. I will stay President forever._

- The End -


End file.
